I’d say it’s all the cleaning station’s fault: Five days of constant manta encounters take their too, especially if they take place in between 12 and 30 ft  depth and allow bottom times of 80+ minutes. Only in the afternoons, when the rays tend to be less active, the boats went out to different spots approved by our guests.
And what would make more sense to switch from XL to XS. Guided by our veteran photogs Tim Rock, Marty Snyderman and Frank Schneider, the photographing guests explored the macro spot „Slow & Easy“ in the resort’s backyard. Snow-white mantis shrimps, gobies & shrimps living in symbiosis, pipe fishes, cleaner shrimps on duty in a fat moray’s mouth and an array of nudibranches kept still and were shot from all sides.

True critter delicacies were brought up by Tim Rock later that day after he went on a little discovery next to the bow of Manta Ray’s restaurant ship Mnuw: Not only mandarinfishes and cowries were sighted, but a photogenic while strange species of shrimp with furry legs. Later on, there was much discussion about the species’s identity during dinner aboard the restaurant ship, but only until Manta Ray Bay’s very own rite of passage was due… One or two fresh beers from the resort’s own micro-brewery might have helped, but nearly every repeater will underline that vacation in Yap is just not the same without that dive off the 30ft high top deck into the lagoon….

Some photographic treats can be seen on the individual facebook sites of Tim Rock and Frank Schneider. Further information: www.mantafest.com, www.mantaray.com

Story & Photos copyright Tim Rock
For Manta Ray Bay

The arrival of a lot more guests for week 2 of Manta Fest saw a few more boats leaving the docks today. Many came in via Palau and arrived at the wee hours, so we took advantage of the late high tide to visit the new cleaning station.

Diver & Manta

Others went to the beautiful hard coral walls of Gufnuw Channel and the old stand-by for macro, Slow & Easy.

Shawn Levin shoots video during Manta Fest

Tonight will be a Week 2 orientation on the Mnuw and no doubt a few lies will be told and some libations drunk.

Shrimps

And so we kick off Manta Fest week 2 with a bang and a nice Micronesian sunset!!

Cardinalfish

Tim Rock has loaded some of the galleries of the first week of Manta Fest 2011 online.

CLICK HERE to see it.

Nudibranchs, Slow & Easy Dive Ste, Yap

Unterwasserfotografen sind schon eine besondere Spezies… „Also, wir hatten ja gestern unsere Mantas, lasst uns einfach zu den Haien wechseln“ – so der Grundtenor nach dem Frühstück am Anleger der Yap Divers. Gesagt, getan. Eine halbe Stunde später rollten Gäste und Foto-Profis bei „Vertigo“ über Bord und landeten im Handumdrehen in einer Gruppe von rund zwanzig Grauen Riffhaien. Einige hatten noch frische Bissmarken von der letzten nicht ganz so kuscheligen Paarungssaison. Wie meistens zogen die Grauen in kleinen Gruppen vor der Wand vorbei während die kleineren Schwarzspitzenriffhaie kaum wagten, ihr Revier über dem flachen Riffdach zu verlassen. Neben den Hai-Begegnungen brachte der Tauchgang einige mittelgroße Zackenbarsche, Regenbogenrenner, eine große Schule Doktorfische und – surprise, surprise – eine Gruppe von Hochsee-Kalmaren.

Mehr als 190 Fotos auf der Speicherkarte und 80 Minuten Tauchzeit hielten unsere Hai-Spezis aber nicht davon ab, auf dem Rückweg noch einmal an der produktivsten Putzerstation anzuhalten. Da sich die Mantas derzeit förmlich das Plankton zufächern, war niemand verwundert, dass dieses Mal fünf verschiedene Tiere ihre Kreise über dem nicht einmal zehn Meter tiefen Riff zogen. Begeistert war am Ende jeder – bis auf Fotograf Tim Rock, der sich eigentlich Weitwinkelfotos der kleineren Bewohner der Putzerstation auf die Agenda geschrieben hatte. Sein Kommentar: „War ja klar. Da warte ich auf den richtigen Zeitpunkt um die Clownfische zu fotografieren, und in dem Moment schleicht sich mal wieder ein Manta an und versaut mir das Bild.“ Luxusprobleme…

Kostproben von Frank Schneider und Tim Rock gibt es auf den jeweiligen Facebook-Profilen zu sehen. Weitere Infos: www.mantafest.com, www.mantaray.com

Underwater photographers are one of a kind… “Well, we got our mantas yesterday, now let’s move on to the sharks“, was the general opinion on the jetty in the morning. Said and done. Half an hour later guests and photo hosts plunged into the water at Vertigo and into a group of around 20 grey reef sharks off the wall. Some of them with bite marks from the last rough mating season. It’s always great to see how the greys patrol the open water while the smaller blacktip reef sharks hardly dare to leave the shallow reef top. Apart from the sharking, the dive also brought some medium-sized groupers, rainbow runners, a big school of convict surgeonfishes and – surprise – a group of pelagic cuttlefish.

More than 190 shots on the memory card in 80 minutes did not prevent our shark enthusiasts from sneaking into the water at this time’s most productive cleaning station around the corner in Mi’l Channel. While there are plenty of manta rays around right now, this dive brought along five different animals in less than 10 metres depth. A great dive for everybody, with the exception of Tim Rock, who tried to get widelens close-ups of smaller fish inhabiting the cleaning station. His comment: “And you guessed it. Here I am shooting clownfish and a manta once again sneaks into the shot!“ Luxury problems… didn’t I mention underwater photographers are one of a kind?

Some photographic treats can be seen on the individual facebook sites of Tim Rock and Frank Schneider. Further information: www.mantafest.com, www.mantaray.com

With good weather in his bags, travel journalist Frank Schneider made his way back to Manta Ray Bay Resort in Yap. In contrast to last year when he did a piece for Germany’s “tauchen“ magazine, he returned as one in four supervising professionals and jury member for the international shoot-out, which is co-sponsored by mares, World of Diving, tauchertraum, Pelican and Henderson.

While Frank was still recovering from the long-wound travel to the tiny paradise that Yap is, his colleague Tim Rock and some guests were already on their way to a cleaning station in Mi’l Channel, which had been only discovered in January. The first trip of the day got both professionals and amateurs four manta rays, which came as close as one arm-length. Without a shadow of a doubt, every photographer suffered from mild cramps from pushing the trigger way too often. The second dive brought two more of the elusive flying carpets.
Not much of a surprise that Frank got onto a boat in a heartbeat and still got to a respectable 4 hours bottom time the same day.
Some photographic treats from the first day can be seen on the individual facebook sites of Tim Rock and Frank Schneider.
Further information: www.mantafest.com, www.mantaray.com

Story and Photo by TIM ROCK

Manta Fest in Yap is slated to begin this weekend. A few of us are here early including my free diver friend Ai Futaki. Here is Ai at 50 feet off Vertigo Wall with a gray reef shark (or six). We had sunny skies and clear, incoming tide waters to dive Miil Channel and then go outside the reef to Vertigo.

Mill produced a school of bumphead parrotfish, jacks and gray reef and whitetip sharks. We then headed to Vertigo. Henry gunned the engines a few times before anchoring and we were greeted by the hungry pack of gray reef sharks hoping for a feeding. They stayed around for the whole dive and Ai put on a show by easily going to 60 feet and shooting video.

Tomorrow we head back to Miil hoping for mantas this time.

Check out the action with daily blogs and posts on the MRBH website.

While my wife Patricia and I were driving to town this morning on our way to pick up our youngest granddaughter who is scheduled to spend the weekend with us, I suddenly realized something special.  The day is glorious, sun is shining, breeze is blowing, everything is green from the summer rains and then it dawned on me.  Exactly 17 years ago, to the day, I was making this same drive as the brand new owner of the Manta Ray Bay Hotel, Yap Divers and Wave Crest Travel Agency.  Sure, I started each of these businesses and ran them from the day they opened but August 1, 1973 was the first day that my family and I actually OWNED them.

What a time it was.  The oldest and youngest kids had turned 12 & 4 years old less than 30 days earlier while the middle two were 8 & 6 respectively.  Today, Numie the oldest one, has just turned 29 with a degree in Hotel Management from the University in Canberra, Australia is married and has a 14 month old daughter – Mary Patricia.  Numie is now the Human Resource Manager for the Resort after having spent her life working at just about every job we have here.  Next in line is Nathan a 24 year old Lance Corporal in the US Marine Corps who spent a year in Engineering School at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and 2 years at the University of Hawaii before finding his calling in the military.  Nathan also spent 2 years as our chef between the time he was in Hawaii and the time he joined the Corps.

Valerie is next in line and she is back home working as a dive guide for Yap Divers after spending two years in the Business program at Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth where she was double majoring in Accounting and Entrepreneurial Studies.  Val is now married and has an 19 month old son – Thaddaeus.  Last, but certainly not least, is Oliver Patrick “OP” Acker who has just celebrated his 21st birthday and is set to graduate from the College of Micronesia in Pohnpei with an AA degree in Computer Information Systems. OP is looking forward to enrolling in the University of Hawaii at Manoa in January (the same school I attended for Graduate School).

I have been married for more than 25 years to Patricia Mangthin, who is sitting beside me this morning as we head for town.  She is happy to finally be a grandmother and realizes how lucky we are that they are all living close to us in Yap.  Patricia has a wonderful family spread between Yap, Saipan and the United States, my family are all still in Texas and doing well.  The kids are healthy, there are two grandkids in Yap, the business is better than it’s ever been so, as Joe Walsh would sing . . . “Life’s Been Good to Me So Far.”

Here I am, at the Manta Ray Bay Resort on the island of Yap in the Pacific region known as Micronesia.  After a long journey from French Polynesia, my video equipment and I have arrived safely.  I had just enough time to set up my diving and video equipment, when Yap Divers announced  a Shark Dive. Yessss, I thought …that is the right way to start my new job as a photo/video pro at Manta Visions.  I was very excited to meet up with the local shark population for the first time and was wondering how many sharks we will see and how close I can get to them.  You know, …I have done more than a thousand shark dives before and honestly I thought it will be hard to impress me.

So how was it, you ask?

As a warm-up Bill Acker, owner/operator of the resort, brought down a basket of fish carcasses and placed it in a crevice in the coral at a depth of 10 meters (30+ feet).  The sharks, mostly grey reef sharks with a few blacktip reef sharks in the midst, smelled the bait but couldn’t get it.  They stayed really cool and the divers, …among them several photographers, had time to find a good place for taking their desired pictures.  The less experienced divers got time to get used to the presence of the sharks.  I started to love them from the first minute.  It was really easy to get close and they almost posed for us.  My camera was rolling and rolling, …didn’t dare switch it off so I would not miss a scene.  It was just beautiful,  the light was perfect and the water extremely clear.

After 10 minutes or so Bill, with the help of a couple of the Yap Diver’s dive guides, brought down a large ball of frozen chum attached to a line and float so that the “chumcicle” stayed in mid-water.  This time the sharks got a bit more excited as they could actually get to the food source.  Still, the entire feed was very controlled and the sharks were just interested in the chum and ignored the divers.  Ok, ok, …some sharks were a little more interested in cameras and strobes but isn’t that what we were looking for?  “Come a little closer baby …..c’mon gimme a smile …” and they did!

To get the feeling you have to be here of course, …even the best pictures cannot make up for the real thing.  So I hope to see you in Yap soon so I can introduce you to my new friends.

We were fortunate to have our good friend, Mr. Ken Kurtis from Hollywood, California back in Yap recently. This was Ken’s 6th visit and he brought several of his best customers with him. Here is an excerpt from his latest newsletter:

Bill,

We had a great week (ten days actually with all the travel time) diving in Yap. Warm water, great weather (the only rain we saw – except for the final day there when we weren’t diving – was always between midnight and 6AM), wonderful animal encounters, fantastic friends at Manta Ray Bay Hotel (still my favorite diving resort in the whole world), and a good time was had by all.

Here’s an easy way of thinking about how special Yap is by looking at these four images from our dives on Thursday:

Dive 1 – Valley of the Rays @ 10:11AM:

Dive 2 – Vertigo shark feed @ 11:46AM:

Dive 3 – Gilman Wall @ 2:18PM

Dive 4 – O’Keefe Island @ 7:50PM

This is a collection of animals that most divers would be happy to see over the course of an entire week. We saw them in a space of less than nine hours on a single day. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You’ve got to go to Yap.

I’ll be working on the trip report and the pictures (and maybe a video too) and will send those to you separately, hopefully towards the end of the week. In the meantime, here are a dozen more images from our wonderful week in Yap: This Week (in pictures) at Reef Seekers.

The crew of Yap Divers spent this morning with several of our guests, including Ken Kurtis of Reef Seekers Dive Company in Hollywood, California, our webmaster Dustin Macdonald, the Captain of the Spanish owned sailing yacht – Never Say Never, currently moored off from the Manta Ray Bay Resort and several local residents of Yap. What were we doing you might well ask?

We were all watching the finals of the World Cup Football, soccer to us Yanks, between Spain and the Netherlands. We projected the game on to the big screen on the S/V Mnuw and sat around drinking fresh brewed coffee while the match was played out. The sun came up just as regulation time was ending so we moved downstairs into the Nautical Weaver lounge and showed the overtime period. I am not sure there is a better setting in the world for watching live sports than the Crow’s Nest as a full moon is rising or in our case, the sun was coming up.

Our group was evenly split between rooting for Spain and/or Holland. As a result of Spain’s 1 to 0 overtime win, Fredy, our Swiss brew meister is telling everyone that Switzerland is co-champion as a result of their opening game defeat of the Spanish.
Needless to say, it was a good morning and after breakfast, 4 dive boats departed for various locations around the island. The seas are very calm, the water is clear and the boat that I was on saw over 20 sharks including white tip, black tip, grey reef and a rare sighting of a zebra shark.

ab dem 1. Juli wird Profi-Filmer Peter Schneider die Leitung von Manta Visions, dem
Video- und Foto-Center des Manta Ray Bay Resorts, übernehmen.

Ambitionierten Filmern und Fotografen ist sein Name sicherlich ein Begriff: Nachdem
der gebürtige Berliner zwölf Jahre lang für das Deutsche Fernsehen gearbeitet hatte,
ging er für neun Jahre nach Rangiroa/Französisch-Polynesien und produzierte
spektakuläre Über- und Unterwassersequenzen, die von National Geogaphic TV,
Dicovery Channel und diversen anderen renommierten Sendern weltweit mit offenen
Armen angenommen wurden.
Einige Highlights seiner bisherigen Karriere bilden die Zusammenarbeit mit Christian
Petron (Haus-Filmer für den Kultregisseur Luc Besson, u.A. „Die Tiefe“, „Atlantis“), der
prämierte Film „Sharks of Rangiroa, from Legend to Reality“ – ein Manifest gegen die
Hai-Fischerei in der Südsee, das tatsächlich ein gesetzliches Fangverbot nach sich zog
– oder etwa eine Sequenz, die nicht nur die Mating-Tänze von Mantarochen, sondern
erstmals in freier Wildbahn auch die Paarung der „fliegenden Teppiche“ eingefangen
hat.

Gemessen an seiner Liebe zu Mantas und Haien – soviel lässt sich wohl schon vorab
sagen – hat sich Peter Schneider mit Yap sicher für die richtige Destination
entschieden.

Der Tauchlehrer und Video-Instructor wird im Rahmen seines neuen Engagements
nicht nur unseren fotografierenden und filmenden Gästen mit Rat und Tat beiseite
stehen und für alle anderen auf Wunsch Erinnerungsvideos produzieren.

Bill Acker, Jan Sledsens und Team freuen sich jetzt schon auf spannende
Unterwasserfilme, die spätestens ab unserem Foto- und Filmwettbewerb Manta Fest
(4.-14. September, mantafest.com) allabendlich über die Großleinwand unseres
Restaurantschiffs Mnuw flimmern werden.


Weitere Informationen:
www.mantaray.com
www.underwatercam.tv
mantavisions@mantaray.com
peter@underwatercam.tv